Saturday, October 15, 2011

Occupy Report

There were people from AFL-CIO, Veterans for Peace, Green Party, MoveOn, can't remember who else. One person with an anti-GMO food sign. One person with a sign against the Federal Reserve Bank. One of the un-speakers pointed out there was nobody from the county Democratic Party.

The un-organizers brought a lot of old movie posters to write signs on the back of, but at first had no markers. Someone came running with a handful of markers. Eventually I was able to make myself a sign that said "99% we are the people" on a folded-over poster. Later I decided my base message was the one I saw on several handmade signs: "Remove corporate influence from politics", so I wrote that on the other folded half, and switched back and forth.

Occupy Port Angeles, October 15, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

An eccentric dude in yellow trousers took the microphone twice. The second time he was singing John Lennon's 'Imagine'. People sang along. The mad-as-the-devil woman read a statement she had written out beforehand. A couple about my age asked me how long I had been demonstrating. I checked my watch. "About 48 minutes," I said. "That makes you senior to us, we got here half an hour ago" they said, and told me that they had never been to a demonstration before.

After standing by the park for an hour, waving signs at the traffic on Lincoln Street (which is US 101 at that point) we started marching and circled around downtown in about 30 minutes (it's a small town), visiting various bank branches, politely stopping for red lights so we interfered with no traffic. Saw a couple of police cars, but their occupants not visible. They didn't need to remind us, we were good about staying on the sidewalk. The front of the line chanted "We. Are. The 99 percent." The back of the line with much louder voices was chanting "YOU. Are. The 99 percent."

"This is my first demonstration," said one young person to another as we were walking. "Same for me," the other replied.

Not entirely a novice. I did sign-waving for Obama at the corner of Lincoln and First on election day in 2008. Before that, a demo about the War (which war, what year) at the Roundhouse in Santa Fe; we sang John Lennon that time too.